Do You Wish You’d Done This Too?

Do You Wish You’d Done This Too?

Regrets, I’ve had a few too few to mention – so the song goes. As it happens, they can be very useful.
Let’s look at the different scenarios now:

The first type is the one where you feel you didn’t capitalise on the opportunity and consequently missed out. I recently heard someone saying “I should have invested in property a few years ago and capitalised on it just at the peak, but of course I’ve totally missed the boat now”.

The second type of regret is the one where you see something fantastic that someone else has done and you wished you’d done the same. At times like this you might say, “what a simple idea and why didn’t I think of that”.
The final type isn’t really about you. It’s about the others (and for fans of ‘Lost’ – no I’m not referring to those ‘others’). It’s to do with the people you often hang around with who say things such as “If I’d had the lucky breaks that he or she had” or “I could have entered that competition and come out on top”. The sad thing about this group is that if the opportunity had come up and nibbled them on their bottom, they’d still have missed it and done nothing about it.
You see there are two types of people in this world. There are those who look at what others have achieved whether that’s wealth, success, or happiness with envy. And the other type is the one that looks at the wealth, success, or happiness of others as a motivational tool.

You can tell straight away which camp individuals fall into as soon as they start to speak. Listen to the language. And if you find yourself saying, “I wish I had done it, thought that, been there, seen it, experienced that, met them, understood this at the time” then you need to add another sentence to it by adding “And now, I will …”.

In many cases there’s still the opportunity to do the thing you thought you’d missed out on. For instance, if you missed out on the student gap year you didn’t have, then maybe it’s time to plan it into your life – even if it is at retirement.
Sometimes you obviously can’t achieve if you missed the opportunity first time round for instance, if you were offered the chance to play for a top league football team at age 17 but didn’t take up the opportunity at the time then it’s impossible to do that at a later age. But you can still make a commitment to yourself to take up other opportunities and not miss anything else in life. Time to book those diving lessons or go for a trek up the Amazon?

Live your life without regrets and seize every opportunity from now on!